


Left to fate

by MorteMistrata



Series: Lions everywhere [11]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Future Vision, Post S6, Romance, Shiro has a choice to make, crash, seeing possibilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 09:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15116243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorteMistrata/pseuds/MorteMistrata
Summary: After the events of s6, Pidge and Shiro crash into a desert world and are stranded as they await help. Shiro receives visions of possible futures and must choose which to pursue.





	Left to fate

**Author's Note:**

> A commission by Keir, who very kindly bought be a couple of ko-fi's recently. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Note: ### denotes line breaks and/or scene shifts.

 

_A bond between souls is ancient- older than the stars themselves._

_//- Unknown Altean scholar_

 

Shiro attempts to mix the two of them some lunch as Pidge moves crates around Green’s cabin. The pre-made food goo powder sloshes around the bowl like a liquid as he attempts to pour water inside, while keeping it steady between his knees (which is much harder than he’d expected it to be, if he’s to be honest). He keeps reaching forward to steady it with the hand he doesn’t have, and forgets his mistake all over again within a few moments. He’s never been used to his lack of an arm; he’d only been without it for a couple of hours before he’d received his prosthetic, which is miniscule compared to the weeks of travel he will have to endure during their journey to Earth.

 

He should ask her for help.

 

Shiro stops messing with the food and watches Pidge. She wears her civilian clothes today, which have grown ragged and worn in the time that he’s been gone. He can spot a patch, just a shade off, on the back of her knee, and her sweater is threadbare enough for him to see her purple tank top underneath. She’s so focused on the collection of crates that she doesn’t notice his lingering stare.

 

Pidge moves a crate to the right, stands back, evaluates. The stack of supplies beside it sway dangerously. She yelps, and hurries to replace it. She stands back again, and crosses her arms. “I’d thought this would be kinda like building a fort, but it’s really not.” She sighs, and glances back at Shiro. He stares guiltily at the half-finished lunch. She snorts, and holds out her hand. “Wanna switch?”

 

Shiro climbs to his feet, careful not to knock over the bowl, and shakes her outstretched hand. “Deal.”

 

Pidge takes his spot in front of the bowl and sets to stirring the half-congealed goop as Shiro reorganizes the crates to create an open space in the center of the cabin. It is simple, easy work that he can accomplish with one hand, and so he doesn’t mind it. After a while, he starts to view it as a real life game of tetris. Long weapons crate here. Food supplies there, where they’re easy to reach. Water near the front.

 

He’s so deep into his task that he doesn’t hear Pidge call for him the first time.

 

“Shiro?”

 

“Huh? Oh, sorry.” He straps the crates to the walls, and then turns to her, ears slightly red. “What were you saying?”

 

She holds up a bowl of food goo. It’s blue and smells slightly clinical. He wrinkles his nose, and sits down on the floor across from her.

 

“Why’s it blue?”

 

Pidge shrugs, and shovels a spoonful into her mouth. “S’not too bad though. Better than Coran’s cooking.”

 

Shiro pictures one of Coran’s ‘special paladin lunches’ and suddenly it doesn’t seem so bad. He takes a tentative bite.

 

Outside of Green’s windshield, the stars surround them. He remembers when he was younger, and his only dream had been to see them with his own eyes. It feels so naive in hindsight. He knows them too intimately now; through Black’s eyes, he has seen more of them than any human ever has, or will. He feels changed because of it, as if he will always be a step out of sync from the others, no matter his companion.

 

He wishes he had’ve stayed home.

 

Pidge sets her bowl down and hands him a packet of juice. “You look old.”

 

Shiro starts, and then laughs. He tugs at one of his newly white locks, and asks, “Is it the hair? I don’t think I wear it as well as Allura does.”

 

She grins, but shakes her head. “No, it’s not the hair. It’s your eyes. It’s just, it’s kind of like,” Pidge trails off, scowls at her lap. “Well, you _have_ seen a lot.”

 

“You think my eyes are old?”

 

Pidge looks up, startled. She shrugs. “I guess. Sorry if that was rude. I just thought of it, ‘cause you were looking so sad.”

 

Shiro takes a long sip of his juice. It squeezes and then flattens with a a gurgle. Pidge collects their bowls- hers empty, his still half-full- and puts them away. He feels guilty for not finishing his food; he always has, because he knows just how scarce food can become, but lately he can barely stomach any. It’s like his body isn’t used to it, even though he knows that it is.

 

When she breaks the silence, her voice is soft, as if she knows that she will regret what she has to say next.

 

“Do you remember any of his memories?”

 

Shiro’s been awaiting this question ever since he’d decided to travel with Pidge for this leg of the journey, but that doesn’t make it any easier to answer. Her eyes, although hidden behind the lenses of her glasses, settle on him like searchlights.

 

Shiro shrugs. “I have his muscle memory. It seems like he used his left arm more than I did.”

 

It’s a non-answer to a vague question, and he knows that this will not satisfy her, but he isn’t sure what he should say. His memory of the time when the body he wears was not his own is foggy and limited, comprised mostly of snapshots and misplaced conversations; to say that he knows nothing is a lie, but to claim that he knows anything is an over exaggeration.

 

Pidge shifts from foot to foot, then sits down again, feet pressed together. Her expression is thoughtful, though she doesn’t speak. Shiro leans forward and scoops one of her puffball pets from where it floats around the head of her Lance-trash-statue, one of the few things she had managed to save from the castle before it’s demise. Lance and Keith are propped up beside each other, Keith’s scowl aimed directly at him, while Shiro and Hunk’s statues sit on the other side of the cabin, strapped securely to the wall of cargo. Shiro knows that there’s an Allura and Coran around here somewhere, but he has yet to find them. So much was misplaced during their quick escape.

 

Shiro pets the puffball, and it purrs like a kitten under his touch. Pidge draws her knees to her chest and sighs.

 

“Anything else?”

 

Another puffball emerges from the depths, and hovers around his head, watching.

 

“Maybe,” He admits. “But nothing concrete.”

 

“But you do remember things?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“So I guess Hunk was right. Most of the other memories must’ve been stored in his arm, so that whoever was in control of him could view them.” She mutters, chewing on her nail. “There’s little overlap of your experiences past a certain point, which we have to assume happened somewhere during that fight with Zarkon.”

 

“Well, that _is_ when I died.” Shiro muses.

 

Pidge starts, and looks at him, wide-eyed. “You shouldn’t be so casual about that, y’know.”

 

“Sorry.” He mutters. “I don’t mean to be.”

 

“S’fine.” She says, but it’s obvious that it isn’t.

 

An alarm blares, and Green veers upward, knocking them both to the ground. As they both scramble to their feet, the comm links turn on, and the cabin fills with noise.

 

“Pidge!” She jumps up and hurries back to her seat at the sound of Keith’s voice. “What’s going on over there? You’re falling out of formation.”  

 

“I know! We’re getting drawn into the planet’s gravitational field,” She messes with some controls, and shakes her head in frustration. “It doesn’t make any sense. We’re too far out for a planet that size to affect us.”

 

“Fall back!” Keith orders, and in the windshield, Shiro can see Yellow and Red drift out of sight. “Pidge, do you think you can break free?”

 

She shakes her head. “If She were freshly rested, maybe, but not now.”

 

“Could we try to tow you out?” Lance suggests.

 

Pidge shakes her head again, but Hunk answers before she can. “If we get close enough to do that, we’re close enough to get pulled in too.”

 

“Well,” Green falls a little deeper into the planet’s range. Pidge tries to course correct, but the best she can do is keep her flying steady. “Should I try and land?”

 

“No!” Allura says, a little too loudly. “This planet is being occupied by Sendak’s forces. I highly doubt that your presence would go unnoticed.”

 

“I really don’t think we have a choice.” Pidge grunts as they fall again. Alarms begin to blare as they lean into a nosedive. She jerks on the steering console. “My lion can’t overpower the g-forces! I think the best I can hope for is a controlled crash.”

 

“Then do it.” Keith orders, his voice strange and tinned. Shiro hears what might be a sigh, and then his voice comes through the speakers once more, staticky and distorted. “Try to stay off the comms unless absolutely necessary. We don’t want to gain any more attention that we already have. And be safe.”

 

The radio cuts out as they pass through the cloud barrier.

 

“Roger that.” Pidge says to herself. Her voice is a calm tenor despite their increasing speed and sharp trajectory. “Hold onto something!” She calls out as Green falls closer towards land.

 

Shiro fumbles with a loose cargo strap, and tries to strap it across his chest. He fumbles, once, twice, and then hooks himself down, his back pressed against a box of food rations. From where he sits on the floor, he can’t see much. He sees what might be a stone tower fly past; the edges of mountains- no, those are sand dunes- that collapse as Green barrels past them; sand pushing against the windshield,covering the green sky with yellow particles; he can see each grain as they whip past; Pidge screams as they head right for a dune; and they are falling- falling- burrowing deep into the earth like a child returning to the womb.

 

###

 

Shiro remembers visiting the aquarium once, when he was a child. His mother had led him from tank to tank, and he had gazed with wonder at the worlds within. At one tank, a little girl stood on the opposite side of it, and through the glass, she had seemed ephemeral,and strange, as if she were just slightly out of place.

 

As Shiro wakes, the world around him has that same quality. The interior of the Green lion is dim, but even so, he can tell that much time has passed since he was last awake. Crates of foodstuffs, and water lay empty and deserted on their sides, covered with a heady layer of dust. The windshield is cracked, and the pilot’s seat is half submerged in a sea of sand.

 

He stands, and stumbles to the seat, and starts to shovel sand out of the chair. His hand moves clumsily, shaking and seizing around nothing as he tries to feel for the back of her sweater, her hair- anything at all.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

He turns, and the world seems to swirl around him. Shiro reaches out with his right hand to steady himself, and falls into the small dune collected on the floor.

 

Pidge offers him a hand, and pulls him to his feet. “I was looking for you.”

 

She pushes her glasses further up her nose, and raises a brow. “Okay, but why?”

 

“Because,” Shiro starts as he looks around the cabin. He shouldn’t have been unconscious for more than a few hours, or a day at most, but it looks like Pidge has been in here for weeks. All that food gone, and the power off and- He shakes his head. “I don’t know actually. I thought we just crashed or something, but-”

 

“Dehydration.” Pidge nods grimly. She starts to rummage through the collection of crates, but keeps an eye on him, as if afraid that he might fall down any second. “I know that the plan was to wait for rescue and all, but I don’t think we’ll last much longer here. Something is wrong with Green, and our rations are getting really low.”

 

“I thought we had weeks worth of the stuff.”

 

Pidge pauses, arm deep in a container. “We’ve been here for over a month.” She shakes her head and continues searching. “I guess you’re more delirious than I thought.”

 

Shiro sits down beside trash-Lance. He doesn’t think that he’s delirious. He feels fine, if a little confused. He closes his eyes and tries to call to Black. Despite no longer being her pilot, the bond that they’d shared during his time in her mind is still there. Maybe she can give him some answers.

 

_Black?_

 

Images flash in his head in quick succession. _Clock. An window. Stars. Sand. White. A road._

 

_What?_

 

Black tries again, slower. _A clock, spinning clockwise so fast that the hands were nothing more than a blur.  The stars, all of them connected by lines of white light. A line from a poem, ‘Two roads diverged in a wood’. A window, through which Shiro sees himself and Pidge on an unfamiliar shore, holding hands which are spotted and gnarled with age._

 

Shiro tries to connect them into a coherent picture. A clock, that would mean time, right? And the increased speed could mean change?

 

Black rumbles her dissent.

 

No, not change. But the arrow-

 

“Here.” Pidge hands him a pack of juice, and he takes it. As he looks up to say thanks, he notices that her skin is tanned, and that her hair has grown long enough to curl around the sides of her face once more. Suddenly, it is all too obvious.

 

This is a vision of the future, of what might come to pass.

 

“So what do you think?” Pidge asks, pulling him from his thoughts. He knows that mentioning his revelation will only make her think him more ill, and decides to just roll with it. After all, what else could he possibly do? “Should we stay here and wait a little while longer, or should try to make a run for that city we saw on the way down?” Pidge sits across from him, legs criss-crossed, and leans on trash-Hunk’s shoulder. “I’da thought Hunk would’ve figured this out by now, to be honest.” She admits.

 

Shiro considers the dismal state of their food stores. If he remembers correctly, they should have three days worth of food left, and little less of water. He remembers what it feels like to grow weaker and weaker by the day; to watch your body wither and grow weak and useless; He doesn’t want anyone to have to go through that, especially not her. It’s the type of thing that leaves you changed; you can never go back to who you were before it.

 

“We’ll try for the city.” He decides, setting the juice down. “And see if we can find help there.”

 

###

 

They start out at sunset, when the sky is stained in hues of lavender and gold, and the two suns rest on opposite sides of the horizon like two glowering eyes. Shiro feels uncomfortably open without his armor, but knows that they have a greater chance of staying hidden if they wear their civilian clothes rather than their armor. Still, Shiro thinks, as he shifts their bag of provisions from one shoulder to the other, he would feel much better if he were wearing them.

 

Pidge steps out of Green and pats her hind flank. “We’ll be back soon, girl.” She joins Shiro, and points towards the smaller of the two suns. “The town should be that way. It’s maybe a day or two away.”

 

She doesn’t seem daunted by the long walk, or harsh desert weather. Shiro wonders if all of them have grown so much in his absence, or if it’s just her. Her skin is just a shade or two darker than her usual pale ablaster, but it suits her well. It’s as if she’s been painted in shades of sepia, to complement the desert around them. The sun catches on the curve of her neck, and the sharpness of her face, and in that moment, Shiro is consumed by her femininity, and the strength that lies therein.

 

“What?” She asks, and he realizes that he’s been staring.  

 

“Nothing,” Shiro says, shaking his head. He can feel the warmth on his cheeks and knows that he’s blushing, but he figures that if he ignores it, and ignores whatever it was that just happened, that it’ll go away.  He gestures for her to walk ahead of him. “After you.”

 

Shiro’s vision swirls and sways as they start to walk, and then suddenly, is suffocated by black.

 

###

 

Shiro returns to the void.

 

It is as intrinsically familiar as the feeling of the Earth beneath his feet. He returns to it easily, like a drop of water returning to the ocean. The stars flow within him, and the vastness of the Black Lion’s mind consumes him.

 

There is a sudden sense of a current diverted, and then he is spat out once more, stuffed into the flesh of a body that is his, but isn’t.

 

###

 

Shiro opens his eyes and the first thing he sees is the ceiling of an unfamiliar room.

 

Or, wait, no.It is familiar. He just hasn’t seen anything like it in a while. The ceiling is made of the same purple metal of every Galra ship he has ever been on. He blinks, and tries to make sense of where he is.

 

He turns his head, and notices a wall made of the same material. The lighting is dim, and the scent of old blood, a universal scent of rust and rot, surrounds him. His nose twitches at it, and for a moment, he fears that he will have another flashback to his gladiator days, but it passes when he realizes that his head is laying on something soft. Shiro knows where he is. He is in a Galra holding cell.

 

Shiro sits up so fast that his head spins.

 

“You’re okay!” Pidge says, her voice strained with tearfulness. Her sweater is torn at the sleeve, and again underneath her breast, where blood plasters it to her skin. “You’ve been knocked out ever since they threw you back in here.”

 

Shiro realizes that his head is throbbing. He reaches up to touch it, and his fingers come away stained in gooey red. A head injury. That would explain him being unconscious until now.  

 

Shiro smears the blood on his pants, and leans against the wall beside her. “What’d I miss?”

 

Pidge shrugs, and then winces, and presses her hand against her shoulder. “Not much. Just more violent interrogation. I was brought back before you were.”

 

Shiro stares at her injury. Red grows and eats into the white of her sweater like a growing fungus. That could be serious, if it goes untreated for long. If they still had the castle and it’s healing pods available for use, then it might’ve been okay, but she’ll have to heal the old fashioned way, the way that leaves scars across your skin that never really go away, no matter how faded they become.

 

“When they separate us for interrogation again, I’m going to create a diversion. If this ship is anything like the rest of them, there’ll be a console two halls over, and-”

 

“Shiro,” Pidge says his name impossibly soft, but it stops him mid-sentence nonetheless. “I can hardly stand. I don’t think I’ll be able to run fast enough, even if you can distract all of the guards.”

 

“Why?”

 

She looks at him oddly, and then points to her leg. Her calf is burned midway down with what appears to be quintessence. Spidery lines of faintly glowing purple climb up into the shadows of her shorts.

 

“I- sorry. My head’s still kind of fuzzy.” He lies. Shiro’s left hand curls into a fist by his side, and he has to force himself to stay calm. Anger does not overwhelm him easily, but it seems all too easy now to succumb to it’s tumultuous grasp. He wants to hurt whoever did that to her, wants to go after Sendak himself for what he’s done, but he’s powerless without his right arm. That makes it hurt even more. “I’m sorry.”

 

Pidge brushes her hair behind her ear and tilts her head. “What for?”

 

“For getting us into this mess. For not being able to protect you. For everything that happened while I was gone.”

 

“Shiro,” She says again, voice quiet. “It’s not your fault. You can’t be there for us all of the time. You can’t always be the hero.”

 

“I don’t have to be the hero. I don’t have to be there for everyone. I just want to be there for you.” He admits.

 

Pidge leans her head on his shoulder, and grabs his hand.

 

“It’s okay.” She says, her tone defeated. “It’s okay.”

 

###

 

Shiro returns to the Black lion’s mind. His headache lingers despite no longer possessing a body.

 

“Why are you showing me this?”

 

The Black Lion does not respond, though Shiro knows she is listening. The sound of rushing wind fills the void. It grazes his skin gently, like a caressing hand, and runs through his hair.

 

“What’s the point?” He asks again, louder this time, but his voice is swallowed by the ever increasing wind. He feels it push him forward, dragging him like a child drags a toy behind him. He stumbles forward, almost tripping on feet he doesn’t have.

 

A sudden, hard gust pushes him forward, and he falls like a stone into a bucket of water, back into his body.

 

###

 

Shiro tugs at his collar. He hasn’t worn a bow-tie in years, not since Lance and Allura got married, and he isn’t sure that he tied it right.

 

“Stop it,” Lance hisses. He wears blue tie, and smile, despite his tone of voice. “She’s about to come out, and I won’t have time to fix it if you mess it up.”

 

Shiro puts his hand down. Wagner’s Bridal Chorus begins to play, and the doors at the back of the room open. Allura steps out first, heavily pregnant, and yet still radiant in a soft green dress made in the style of a modified A-line. Behind her is one of Lance’s nieces, barely three, who tosses green-dyed rose petals wildly around her. And behind her is Pidge, slightly taller, eyes wide and bright. She wears a cross between a suit a dress; a voluminous ballgown skirt, over a pair of white pants. Her bayard hangs on her waist, half hidden by the skirt. Her father, more grey and more wrinkled than the last time they had met, escorts her to the altar.

 

She smiles at him, even as she limps towards him on her injured leg. She looks so happy that he can’t help but feel happy too. Shiro’s heart swells with something indescribable, and he smiles. He’s getting married to Pidge.

 

The Black Lion rumbles with something like approval, and the image fades away, like a photograph slowly being leeched of its color.

 

###

 

Shiro feels himself drawn back, pulled backwards like soap down the drain, spiralling, falling inward until his sense of self is so indistinct, that he isn’t even sure of who he is. Suddenly, it stops, and he is pulled back into his earlier self, a body familiar in it’s lack of familiarity.

 

###

 

Shiro wakes to find the world hazy and strange. He notes that he is once again inside of the Black Lion, which is dim and covered in a heavy layer of dust. He notes the empty crates of foodstuffs, and water, and the cracked windshield, and realizes that he is once again back at that earlier future.

 

Pidge stands and hands him a pack of juice, then slumps down beside him. “I don’t think we can last here much longer.” When she looks up at him, her eyes are dull. “Should we stay here and wait a little while longer, or should try to make a run for that city we saw on the way down?”

 

Shiro remembers the wounds she’d received from his previous choice, and the limp that she had carried with her even at their wedding, far in the future. If he can save her from that pain, then he will. “Let’s wait it out.”

 

###

 

“So this is my other choice then.” Shiro muses.

 

The Black Lion rumbles her assent.

 

“Let me see where it leads.”

 

This time the transition is smoother, softer. He hardly even notices until he is dropped back in his body.

 

###

 

The crates lay empty and discarded in neat stacks around them. A few have been filled with sand, but a thin layer still rests on the ground, and in small heaps by the corners. His stomach rumbles, and Pidge winces.

 

“Water?” She offers, but he has already drunk his own rations. He cannot take from hers when there is so little left.

 

Shiro shakes his head, and she sets it aside.

 

“No one else wants to tell you, so I’m going to.” Pidge stares at her lap resolutely, as if her next words are written there. Shiro resists the urge to tilt her chin up. Whatever familiarity that they used to share might’ve been broken during his absence; it is better to play it safe, to be aloof, than to be too familiar. “Because this is important, and I don’t think coddling you is going to make things better.”

 

“Coddling me?” He repeats, a faint smile sneaking into his words despite himself. Shiro has never put a name to it, but it’s true that the others have treated him different as of late. “And you don’t want to.”

 

She falls silent.

 

The sands shift a little. He waits. Shiro is good at waiting. When he died, when he was nothing but a passing thought kept alive in the consciousness of the Black lion, all he could do was wait. He is accustomed to long periods of stillness and quiet, due to his experiences there, but Pidge is not.

 

The silence builds until she suddenly looks up, her eyes wide and brimming with tears. “Keith told you about your fight with him, and about the other clones, and I told you about the virus and the castle. But I didn’t tell you the details, or at least, not all of them.” Her mouth is crooked angrily, chin jutted out like the sharp of a knife. She takes a deep breath, and the words are calm and unapologetic. “I was ready for something like that to happen. I’ve been prepared for it for years now.”

 

“Prepared for what?”

 

“A betrayal.”

 

“You thought I’d betray you,” It hurts more than he can bare to admit. “From the very beginning?”

 

“Your arm has always been a security risk. It wasn’t you that I was worried about.” She says, trying to soothe him. “It was your arm.”

 

“Still.” He mutters.

 

Pidge huffs and crosses her arms. “If I hadn’t, we all would have died.”

 

“You’re saying that I would’ve killed all of you.” He says, swallowing hard. “That’s what you’re saying.”

 

“No, I-” She breaks off suddenly, draws her knees to her chest. “Forget it. Maybe the others were right. I shouldn’t have told you.”

 

Shiro isn’t sure what to say, and so lets them fall back into silence.

 

###

 

Shiro feels a sudden gust push him aside, and then it’s over.

 

He rejoins his flesh and reenters seamlessly.

 

###

 

They pass each other in the halls of the Galaxy Garrison and do not speak.

 

There is no dislike for each other, or hatred or anything of the sort, but whatever closeness they had once had is gone, left in that hot cabin so long ago. Shiro wants for it, but isn’t sure how to close that gap. Whatever they could have been, is long gone.

 

“Shiro,” Iverson places his hand on his shoulder, and he stops, schools a pleasant expression on his face, and turns around. “I know that this is not how we usually do things, and that this is rather last minute, with your teammates returning to space in less than a week, but the Garrison, in conjunction with the Planetary Space Alliance, would like to offer you a position as our Defense coordinator.”

 

Pidge has stopped a little farther down the hallway, her head cocked to the side as she doesn’t even attempt to hide the fact that she’s listening in.

 

“What does that actually mean?”

 

Shiro can see it in the way that his face grows just a little too slack that he dislikes that Shiro is being offered the job. “You would be in charge of all contact with and preparation for any attacks. If any attacks do occur, you would be in charge of protecting the Earth. And of course, you would be our liaison to any peaceful visitors.”

 

Pidge’s shoulders tense up. Her face is half turned towards him now, her mouth a strict line of disapproval.

 

If you want me to stay, then tell me, he thinks. Say anything, and I’ll tell him no.

 

But she does nothing, and stays silent.

 

“I would be honored.” Shiro says, and shakes Iverson’s hand.

 

Pidge shakes her head, and continues down the hall, hands balled into fists, and shoulders shaking with what might be tears. Shiro tells himself not to watch, that it doesn’t matter, but his eyes don’t leave her until she is long gone, and the only thing left of her is the echo of her footsteps going down the hall.

 

###

 

The Black Lion’s voice, a rare sound, echoes in his head as he wakes to his own body, the one of present day. _Make your choice._

 

Sand is in his mouth, and down his vest and in his hair, but he has never been so glad to be uncomfortable. He opens his eyes and lifts his head up, realizing that he’s still strapped securely to the crates. With a shaky hand, he unstraps himself, and stands up.

 

Pidge is in the pilot’s seat still, covered almost entirely by sand, except for her head, tilted towards the sky. He digs her out, and pulls her out, sets her on top of it all to wait for her to wake up.

 

He sits down on the console beside her and tries to think of what he should do. In one future, they fall in love, and have their happy ending, but in the other, the fall apart and away from each other, their feelings never realized. In one, she is injured, and forever wears a scar from it. In another, she is fine.

 

How is he supposed to make a choice like that? Shiro thinks, though he already knows which one he will pick. Why would the Black Lion give him the ability to choose, when he would have been fine in his ignorance?

 

Pidge stirs on her bed of sand, and turns onto her side. “I missed you.” She murmurs, still half asleep. “Shiro.”

 

His heart aches at the sound of her voice. She loves him too, or at least, will grow to, and Shiro thinks that she will understand.

 

He reaches over and slips his fingers into her hand, which tighten around them. “I’ll choose us,” He whispers, quiet enough that she wouldn’t hear, even if she were awake. “Because I think that you would choose us too.”


End file.
